


From This Wreckage

by ghostlike



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Groundhog Day, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 22:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15059615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlike/pseuds/ghostlike
Summary: Kylo Ren wakes up on the morning of Snoke’s death again, and again, and again.





	From This Wreckage

 

Kylo Ren wakes up in the dark of the sparse, utilitarian space he has convinced himself is his own, gasping in deep breaths as he sits straight up in bed, the blankets pooling around his waist. His skin is cold and clammy. The clock embedded in the wall at his bedside tells him he’s been asleep for an hour, even as he feels he’s slept for a hundred days or more. He rubs at the bridge of his nose with a shaking hand, trying to ignore the pressure in his chest that feels like a blossoming bruise. There is a pull at the back of his mind that feels like a memory, like something important he’s forgotten and can’t remember, and he knows it’s her. Across the galaxy, amidst dying stars and abandoned planets, she makes her final preparations and climbs into the pod that will bring her to him. The pressure in his chest twists so violently it almost steals the breath from his lungs again.

 

Ren is accustomed to nightmares. He’s familiar with waking in the middle of the night with the memory of fire licking at his palms and the glow of green in his eyes. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in them, but this isn’t like that at all. He knows with startling clarity that she will come to him, across light years and endless space and against everyone’s better judgment, and he can’t fathom how he knows it with such fierce certainty. It’s been days since he’s seen her, since he’s spoken to her, and she feels like his nightmares - like something distant he’s struggling to move past. 

 

He pushes through the doubt, through the itching at the back of his mind that feels familiar and disjointed, and gets dressed in motions that feel practiced and old. 

 

Twelve hours later an officer approaches him on the bridge, to interrupt an old argument Hux and he have had a thousand times before, who tells him that there is a pod approaching. He half expects to find the pod empty, for it to be anyone else, but the cover slides back and she opens her eyes and he tries to ignore the constriction in his chest he can’t explain. For a moment he thinks he will wake in his room, sweat at his brow and struggling to breath with the rage building in the base of his spine, but this isn’t a dream. 

 

He steps back from the pod, ignores the wariness in her eyes, and lets the Trooper restrain her. 

  
  


\+ + +

 

Nothing goes as planned. Ren is no stranger to anger, to the white hot burst of fury that accompanies it, but he feels it so clearly now that it is all he can focus on. Rey resists longer than he thought she would, proves she’s stronger than any of them have given her credit for, and by the time her screams echo through Snoke’s chamber Ren’s hands are shaking with rage. He curls them into fists, until he can feel the seams of his gloves threatening to tear, and he kneels in submission until the cold hard floor feels like nails digging into his knees. 

 

_ Prove your loyalty _ , Snoke’s actions seem to say, when he places her on the floor in front of him and demands he make sacrifice, after sacrifice, after sacrifice. Ren struggles to remain in control of the range that cycles through his blood like venom, struggles to become stronger than the emotions clouding his judgment, tries not to let it blind him into making decisions he shouldn’t ever make. Fighting through his anger is like moving through quicksand, exhausting and fruitless, but this time he doesn’t try. He sees through his fury with unsettling clarity, like a fog lifted from his mind. Snoke demands a sacrifice, demands he prove his loyalty, and Ren chooses her between one breath and the next. 

 

For a moment time does stop around them. When she gazes up at him, her eyes wide and her expression open, it feels as though the galaxy itself stops for them. His heart skips a beat in his chest, stopped like the breath caught in his throat, and he can feel the static in his fingers that itch to reach for her-

 

The fighting starts, and it shouldn’t be this easy with her. She shouldn’t slide so easily beneath his defenses, beneath his trust, but she does. Rey moves into his blind spot, moves against his back like she’s always belonged there, and it lifts something from his shoulders he hadn’t known he’d been carrying. She moves with him like she’s meant to be there and he wants to revel in it, but he can’t push away the feeling of familiar that haunts him like guilt. 

 

_ You’ve been here before _ , he thinks, and his throat tightens unpleasantly in anxiousness as the last guard falls at his feet. He sees a flash in his mind, of bright lights and of the ship shaking at its core around them, but he pushes the images aside. This is a moment a victory. This is a stepping stone. 

 

Her words are echoing in his head before she says them and that could mean anything - could be a symptom of their bond - but the sickening feeling of deja vu won’t go away. He finds himself irrationally nervous, as he stares at her and something in the back of his head says, before he’s even sure of it himself, ‘ _ She won’t stay with you. _ ’

 

Ren knows she will reject him before she does. It doesn’t make the pain in her eyes easier. It doesn’t soften the blow of her begging, “Don’t do this, Ben.”

 

He lets her disappoint him, let’s her go for the saber, even though he knows in his mind it will happen. They fight over it, with it hung in the air between them like a promise, and then the explosion throws them both across the room. 

 

The ship trembles. His ears are ringing. Across the floor she lays unmoving, blood pooling in a halo around her head, and he thinks,  _ ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up. _ ’

  
  


\+ + +

 

Kylo Ren wakes up in the darkness of his room, gasping in deep breaths as he sits straight up in bed, the blankets pooling around his waist. His skin is cold and clammy. The clock embedded in the wall at his bedside tells him he’s been asleep for an hour, even as he feels he’s slept for a hundred days or more. He rubs at the bridge of his nose with a shaking hand, trying to ignore the pressure in his chest that feels like a blossoming bruise. There is a pull at the back of his mind that feels like a memory, like something important he’s forgotten and can’t remember, and he knows it’s her. 

 

This is the third day he’s woke like this, with the bitterness in his mouth and terror clawing at the back of his neck, and he tries to soothe the anger that builds in him when he thinks someone must be playing him. 

 

The officer arrives to tell him of the approaching pod, Rey stares at him with hesitant hope, and he hauls her through the ship and into the elevator that will take them to Snoke’s chamber. 

 

She won’t submit, and Snoke won’t let her live, and Ren won’t kill her. 

 

The ship blows apart while they’re still fighting over a lightsaber.

 

He wakes up alone in his room.

  
  


\+ + +

 

“I feel the conflict in you,” Rey tells him on day four, in the elevator, and for a brief, wild moment Ren considers pushing the button to return them to the hangar. He considers placing her back into her pod and sending her back to the Falcon, back to safety, away from him. 

 

“You can’t win this,” he tells her, veering violently off the course of their scheduled conversation. He can see her bleeding out onto the platform, her blood dark against the floor – it's all he can see. “You won’t convince him. You won’t convince me. You and the resistance – Skywalker – none of you will win this. This only ends in sorrow for you.”

 

And she stares back at him, defiant as always, and impossibly arrogant – like she knows him better than he knows himself. 

 

“And how does it end for you?” she asks, and when she reaches out to take his hand the ship trembles around them, far ahead of schedule, and he can’t close his hand around hers before the space around them erupts into flames.

 

\+ + +

 

On day five he delays going to the hangar, delays their meeting as long as he can. He instructs his men to take her to a holding cell and thinks maybe if he can keep her from Snoke he can keep her safe. 

 

All his deviation in routine does is entice General Hux to take her instead, to circumvent his orders in an attempt at gaining favor, and Ren can feel his mistake the moment Rey steps foot out of the elevator into Snoke’s chamber. 

 

He runs, but he’s only just made it to the elevator when they kill her, when he feels her death strike through him like steel through his spine. It brings him to his knees, the breath wrenched from him like it never belonged. The metal of the elevator buckles around him, peeling circuits and panels away from the frame in bursts of electricity and violence that he can’t control. He can barely see through the white hot rage that filters through him, that wraps around his bones and strangles him until it’s all he can feel. 

 

He tears the ship apart, tears them apart, but is eons too late. 

 

She’s in a heap on the floor at his feet, blood pooling around her head like a halo, and he can’t move. What little remains of the ship explodes right on schedule.

 

\+ + +

 

Day seven doesn’t wash the memory of her death from his hands. He shows up to the hangar before the officer can even leave to get him and he waves off the Trooper who tries to shackle her wrists. 

 

Halfway down the hall to the elevator he turns them sharply, takes her down a corridor, and leads her to a set of escape pods no one will see leaving. 

 

“I’m not leaving without you,” she says, adamant, and he wants to shake her. 

 

“If you don’t leave without me you won’t leave here at all,” he replies, and when he steps into her personal space she doesn’t shrink back, doesn’t step away. She stares back at him, defiant and strong, and he’s almost overwhelmed by how angry it makes him. He hisses, voice loud in his own ears, “I am trying to save you.”

 

“I’m not the one who needs saving,” she says, gentle, unrelenting, and he doesn’t understand how she can be so wrong. 

 

He forces her into the pod and sets it on a course back to where he thinks the falcon might be. 

 

She’s shot down by a resistance fighter before she even leaves his line of sight. 

 

\+ + +

 

Day six and seven change nothing. She begs him to be someone he can’t, and he tries to get her to see reason, and she dies bleeding out on the floor of Snoke’s chamber with the lightsaber lying useless between them. 

 

Day eight changes only slightly when he misses his cue in the elevator, when she stands in front of him and insists she knows better and all he can do is stare at her and see her lifeless on the floor. He thinks maybe this is a hell of his own making, that maybe he’s trapped forever to relive the agony of reaching out through the void to bring her back with him just to watch her suffer. He doesn’t know who has this kind of power, to trap him here in this loop, but he hates them with such ferocity it is almost unbearable. 

 

“…Ben?” she asks, brow furrowed, and he realizes he’s been staring at her without speaking for too long. 

 

He swallows around the bile in his throat and says, “This path you’re on will kill you. I’ve seen it.”

 

If she thinks the conviction in his voice is odd she doesn’t comment on it. She’s too stubborn to admit the resistance is fighting a losing battle. She’s too stubborn to let go. 

 

“You’re going to die for this cause,” he tells her. 

 

“Maybe,” she agrees, and he doesn’t shrug her off when she curls her hand into the palm of his. Her eyes are bright, fierce like the rest of her, and she smiles at him in a way that curls around every bone in his body like fire. “But not by your hand. You are better than this, Ben.”

 

He wakes up on day nine, gasping in gulps of air, the blankets pooled at his waist. His brow is dotted with perspiration, his skin is cold. His eyes are wet and red and he can’t breathe in deep enough, can’t shake the feeling of her hand in his. 

 

\+ + +

 

Kylo Ren wakes up in the sparse, utilitarian space that is only beginning to feel like his own, gasping in deep breaths as he shoots straight up in bed, the blankets pooling around his waist. His skin is clammy and the clock on the wall tells him he’s only been asleep for an hour, even when it feels like he’s been sleeping for days. He rubs at the bridge of his nose with a shaking hand, trying to ignore the pressure in his chest that feels like a blossoming bruise. There’s a pull at the back of his subconscious that feels like a memory, like something important that he’s forgotten and can’t remember, and he knows it’s her. Across the galaxy, amidst dying stars and forgotten planets, she makes her final preparations and climbs into the pod that will bring her to him, and the pressure in his chest twists so violently it almost takes the breath out of his lungs again. 

 

Their bond hasn’t been something controllable, something capable of being manipulated, but on the tenth day he reaches out to her regardless. Across the galaxy, amidst dying stars and forgotten planets, she is making her final preparations aboard the Falcon. He reaches, ignoring the splitting in his head that grows to a crescendo, until he can see her standing in the middle of his room deciphering coordinates.

 

“Don’t come,” he says, and his own voice echoes loudly in his ears. 

 

She looks up from her task, but doesn’t turn to look at him. “Getting cold feet?”

 

“Whatever you’ve seen, whatever good you think is left in me, you’re wrong.”

 

“I’m not wrong,” she does turn to him now, and she looks so resolute. “Not about this. I’m not the only one who believes in you, Ben.”

 

“And you won’t be the first to die from it,” he stands up, but doesn’t approach her. He thinks if he gets any closer she’ll notice the way his hands are shaking. “But you will die if you come.”

 

“Maybe,” she says, like it’s of no consequence, like it’s something she’s considered and weighed and disregarded. She says it like it’s not important, like it’s not the first thing he sees every time he closes his eyes. 

 

_ Maybe _ , she says, and boards the pod. 

  
  


\+ + +

 

“We can still make it in time,” she says, hopeful, on day eleven.

 

“Please don’t go this way,” she begs, desperate, on day twelve.

 

He thinks maybe the only way to get through this is to steel himself, to become callous to the betrayal in her eyes, to the way her voice shakes. He thinks that maybe the only way he moves on from this is to kill the part in him that twitches the nerves in his hands, that tells him to reach out and see if the curve of her cheek is as soft as it seems.

 

On day thirteen he stares at the elevator wall as she beseeches him and waits for his cue and tries not to feel anything when she goes for the saber. 

 

On day fourteen, she stands in front of him, alive and cheeks flushed, and he resists the urge to reach out and feel the pulse in her wrist. She stands with her back straight, her eyes bright, like she can’t feel the exhaustion that is pressing against his shoulders like a lead weight. She looks invincible for all that he knows she breaks apart like a doll. He’s seen her skull cracked open on the floor enough to know.

 

“You are going to fail,” he tells her, in the middle of her speech, when he can’t stand to listen to it any longer. 

 

Rey hesitates, caught off guard. “What?”

 

“You think you’ve seen the light in me, you think you’ve seen me at your side, but you’re wrong,” he continues. “Snoke is showing you what you want to see. You played into his hands and now you’re here just like he planned.”

 

“I don’t need to see anything,” she says, like it matters, like it has anything to do with how her body ends up lifeless and motionless at his feet. She reaches out, like she has nothing to fear from him, and takes his hand in hers without hesitation. Something twists violently in his chest, contracts around his lungs like a vice, and he grits his teeth until his jaw aches. “Ben, I can feel it.”

 

“You’re delusional,” he attempts to pull his hand away, but her grip tightens and she steps closer, until he can see the freckles dotting her nose, until all he can think about is the curve of her lips and how she smells so strongly of sea spray.

 

“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,” she says, because she doesn’t know how this day ends, how this day has ended again and again and again. “When you took my hand the first time I felt the good in you. Whatever else is haunting you, whatever else is pulling you away, I know we can fight it. Don’t you feel that?”

 

Ren feels tired, feels exhaustion carved into every bone in his body, and he feels, for the first time in a long time, entirely powerless. 

 

The anger and the regret he feels when he looks at her are becoming close friends. They’ve stood in this elevator too many times, with the hope shining in her eyes that he knows can’t stay there, and maybe this is his own personal hell that he’s placed himself in. He looks at her, at the raw emotion in her expression that he will be forced to watch die a hundred more times, and feels it pulling him apart at the seams. She is alive, and vibrant, and before the hour is up she will die at his feet, with her blood in a halo around her head, and he feels powerless. 

 

He feels as though he is drowning, struggling for air beneath these waves that are crippling him, and it’s not until her brow furrows and she squeezes his hand – “Ben?” – that he recognizes it for the fear it is. 

 

“I don’t feel it,” he lies, but it does nothing to change the outcome of their day. He tries not to feel anything when he lifts his head up later to see her’s cracked open on the floor. He tries to feel nothing, tries and tries - until there is blood in his mouth and the room aches and groans against the outburst of power he can’t control. 

  
  
  


\+ + +

  
“Give up on me,” he demands, in the dark of his room, before he’s even had time to shake off the cold fingers wrapped around his heart. 

 

Lightyears away, she pauses from her task, but doesn’t look at him. “I will not.”

 

“You have to give this up.”  _ You have to give me up. _

 

She does stop then. She rests her hands on the console and turns to look at him, and he wonders for a brief moment how desperate he must sound. “Why?”

 

_ Because you’ll die _ .  _ Because there is no winning this. Because I love you _ . The words stick in his throat, heavy and sharp. 

 

“I’m not worth it,” he manages, the honesty bitter against his tongue, and he should know that isn’t good enough for her, that there isn’t any way to stop her. He should know by now there’s nothing he can say that will keep her on the Falcon – there are no insults, no pleas, nothing he can say. He’s had plenty of time to try. 

 

“You’re worth it to me,” she says, simply, and boards the pod.

  
  


\+ + +

 

He takes her hand in the elevator and doesn’t let go. They face Snoke together, face his guards together, win together. He feels exhilarated by the change, by the rush of adrenaline that makes it feel as though they are unstoppable, but it is short lived.

 

“Don’t do this, Ben,” she begs, for what feels like the hundredth time. He thinks this must be what it feels like to be torn apart, to be rent asunder again and again. 

 

“This never works!” he screams at her, on day fifteen. “Try something else.  _ Say something else _ !”

 

The explosion happens further away, wrenches the walls of the room apart, and he isn’t fast enough to grab her before she is pulled out of the ship and into the curl of fire rampaging across the hull. 

  
  


\+ + +

 

On day sixteen he removes her shackles in the elevator, tangles his gloved fingers in her hair and kisses her as gentle as he can manage with the way his hands are shaking. Her hands on him feel like brands, like they will burn through his clothes and sear his skin, and she doesn’t hesitate – she never hesitates. She kisses him like she’s crossed the galaxy to find him, like she can feel the way his heart clenches when she speaks, like she has any idea how she’s ruined him. She is so alive against him, strong and stubborn and tearing through his defenses like she’s ever learned how, and he thinks it a cruel joke that none of this matters. None of this will ever matter. 

 

When he pulls away her lips are red, her cheeks flushed, and he feels a chill in the base of his spine he cannot shake. 

 

“Don’t leave my side,” he says, begs, and she finds his hands with her own and she promises, she swears. He thinks he could weave them a lifetime made solely out of her promises, out of the way she looks at him in this elevator and tells him every time - a hundred times, on loop forever - that she’s seen his future as clear as day.  _ You’ll turn _ , she says, every time, and he rests his forehead against hers and tries to imagine that this is the day she says,  _ “I’m ready to let the past die. _ ”

 

They leave the elevator together, hand in hand, but it doesn’t matter. It is immeasurably worse in the end. 

 

Her voice shakes, the betrayal on her face like a knife in his chest, when she says, like every time before, “Don’t do this, Ben.”

 

 

\+ + +

  
Day seventeen turns into day eighteen. Day eighteen turns into nineteen. 

 

He loses count of the times she moves at his side like she belongs there, fights alongside him like she’s always been destined to be there. 

 

He doesn’t know what else he can say to make her stay, what else he can do. He wakes up in the dark of his room and screams until he is hoarse, but nothing changes. 

 

\+ + +

  
Ren stares at the sad, lifeless corpse still atop its throne and thinks of what could be, of what is staring him down and challenging him to take it, and tries to ignore the ringing in his ears. The adrenaline of the fight is filtering away, leaving behind the fatigue that has poisoned him for what feels like forever. The weight on his shoulder feels as though it weighs a thousand pounds. 

 

“Ben?” he hears, distant and soft, as though he’s underwater. He turns, to see the same hesitant look pulling at Rey’s expression that’s been there every day. She is still so hopeful, even as he can feel the fear swelling inside of her; she is so unwilling to believe this could be how it all plays out. 

 

She’s a fool, a blind fool. She’s unbearably naïve, unrepentantly hopeful, and those cowards don’t deserve her.  _ He _ doesn’t deserve her.

 

He glances back at the throne, at the blood oozing down onto the floor, and jolts when her hand settles on his elbow. He glances down at her, almost in shock. 

 

“Ben,” she says again, like this means nothing, like this tiny change in this constant hell is nothing, and her grip on him tightens ever so slightly. He wants to hold on to her, to keep her here, almost as much as he wants to push her away – to demand that she leave, immediately, before – 

 

He doesn’t reach for the saber. He reaches out to her before the ship can even begin to tremble, before the explosion has even begun, and wraps his arm around her as the Resistance ship makes impact. He tucks her against his chest, hand clutching the back of her head like he can stop the inevitable, and then the force of the impact explodes around them like it’s done a hundred times before. 

 

It doesn’t throw them anywhere. It is her hands outstretched, power flowing through her, that steadies the both of them through the tremors. He clings to her, as though she will slip through his fingers into dust if he lets go, and stares at the concentration on her face as she holds them carefully in place. 

 

Debris falls around them, the tremors subside. He moves his hands to her shoulders, to the curve of her arms, and imagines if he breathes this will all go away. 

 

“We still have time,” she starts, and the relief is so palpable on her face he thinks if he leaned in now and kissed her he could taste it. “They need us. We have to get to them.”

 

“We should hurry,” he says, mouth dry and his words are steadier than his heartbeat. 

 

She curls her hand in his and doesn’t let go.

  
  



End file.
